All My Sins Remembered Read Online Free PDF

and again after they’ve finished work. The Public Health Commission designed a remote diagnostic machine similar to the one a doctor uses. There are four of them all synched into my computer over there. It checks out their respiration rate, skin temperature, pulse, and such; if there’s any significant difference between two consecutive readings, they send the fellow over to me. By the time he gets here, the computer has filled me in on his medical history, and I can dope out some empirical remedy based on clinical experience and physiological experiments. I never have any idea whether the remedy is going to reduce the symptoms. A drug will work perfectly on one of them, and on the next the symptoms will just get worse and worse until he curls up and dies. And you know what they say about that.”
    “Yeah—‘He was ready for stillness.’”
    “Right—they tolerate the treatment only because it’s a condition for employment. They’d never come on their own.”
    “Have the diagnostic machines given you any clue as to the reason they’re dying off so much younger than before?”
    “Oh, sure…symptoms, in a statistical sense. For instance, the average respiration rate has increased more than ten per cent since we started taking readings. Average body temperature, up almost a degree. That supplements my clinical data; both together led to the original conclusion that it was cumulative poisoning. Bismuth would fit the data nicely, since I found in radioactive organ traces that it all accumulates in one organ and is never excreted.
    “And it has to be something associated with the mines. You know, they keep careful demographic records; the families with the greatest number of recent additions to stillness have the most ‘political’ power. It turns out that the life expectancy of those who don’t work in the mines hasn’t changed a bit.”
    “I didn’t know that!”
    “The Company doesn’t like it spread around.”
    They talked for another hour, Crowell mostly listening, Otto developing a plan.
    4.
     
    It was almost dark when Crowell trudged up the walk to the doctor’s office. The Gravitol had worn off and he was feeling miserable again.
    The doctor’s office had the first modern furniture, a conservative chrome-and-plastic desk, and the first attractive woman Crowell had seen on the planet.
    “Do you have an appointment, sir?”
    “Uh, no, ma’am. But I’m an old friend of the doctor’s…”
    “Isaac—Isaac Crowell! Come on back and say hello!” The voice came from a little intercom on her desk.
    “Last room down the corridor to your right, Mr. Crowell.”
    Dr. Norman met him in the corridor and steered him to a different room, pumping his hand. “It’s been so long, Isaac—I heard you were back and frankly, I was surprised. This is no planet for oldsters like us.” The doctor was an affable giant; red-faced and white-haired. They went into his living quarters, a two-room apartment with a worn carpet and lots of old-fashioned books on the walls. When they entered, music started playing automatically; Crowell couldn’t identify it, but Otto knew: “Vivaldi,” he said without thinking.
    The doctor looked surprised. “Finally getting an education in your old age, Isaac? I remember when you thought Bach was just a kind of beer.”
    “I’m finding time for a lot of things now, Willy.” Crowell lowered his bulk into an overstuffed chair. “All of them sedentary.”
    The doctor chuckled and strode into the kitchenette. He put ice in two glasses, measured brandy into each, and splashed soda into one, water into the other.
    He handed the brandy and soda to Crowell. “Always remember a patient’s prescription,” he said.
    “As a matter of fact, that’s one thing I dropped by for.” Crowell took a sip from his drink. “I need a month’s supply of Gravitol.”
    The smile went off the doctor’s face and he sat down on the couch, putting his drink down without sampling it. “No, you